... has failed to stir more than a minuscule minority of retailers and consumers.

According to the consortium's website: "Combined, these participating member merchants already serve nearly every smartphone-enabled American on a weekly basis, giving MCX the unique ability to offer a mobile-commerce solution that truly works for consumers."

The combined annual sales of MCX's founding members total around $1 trillion. As the market for mobile transactions grows, MCX members would doubtless like to munch as much of that mouthwatering pie as possible.

According to a Juniper Research report, although sales of physical goods by mobile phone are only expected to account for 4% of retail transactions by 2017, they will amount to more than $1.3 trillion in total revenues.

Read the original unabridged article here.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... "as brilliant as I think Allaire’s analysis is, it is also self-serving."

He notes that Brightcove is a self-styled "leading global provider of cloud content services [that] provides a family of products used to publish and distribute the world’s professional digital media.”

Mr Kosner then rams his point home: "In other words, for all the content providers for Apple’s TV products who would become 'just apps', Brightcove is positioned to provide an HTML5 app platform and cloud hosting services for all those apps they will need to build, host and maintain. Sweet!" 

But just as Allaire maintains that Apple is able to see “that TV monitors are just … high-quality audio/video rendering devices—and that the real power lies in application platforms and user interaction devices that can be easily brought to bear on those monitors,” his own perspective as an app provider allows him to reconceptualize TV, as well.

Kosner continues: "Here’s where Allaire makes the most important point about Apple’s strategy".

“Rather that putting Apple software directly into the TV, they are bringing your existing Apple devices and applications to the TV set without requiring you to buy a new TV monitor.

"In short, the iPhone and iPad in your pocket or handbag is the next-generation TV set-top box, and it is both highly personal and highly social and capable of bringing hundreds of thousands and soon millions of rich interactive applications and experiences onto your TV set.”

Kosner believes that for developers Apple “will release new iOS APIs for dealing with second screen device capabilities such as the new camera and microphone, motion detection and speech recognition,” which will encourage them to build Apple TV-ready iOS apps.

Read the original unabridged article here.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... a smartphone capable of downloading and playing PlayStation games, a portable device said to blur the distinctions between a netbook computer, an electronic book reader and a PlayStation Portable, or PSP.

The multifunction device is reportedly designed to compete against Apple's latest iPad. Sony refused to confirm the report but stressed it is interested in networked portable products. "Sony and Sony Ericsson have been strengthening their collaboration in the networked mobile space," it said in a statement.

"However, it is not our strategy to discuss future products or business plans before we make a formal announcement. Any media report that suggests details of the product or business is based on speculation."

Apple has sold more than 40 million iPhones. The iPhone and iPod Touch are competing with Sony's PSP in the handheld gaming market. The iPad is expected to rival the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle in the e-reader market.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

...  “You can isolate and magnify what you want to see, and make the rest invisible. You can amplify the waves tremendously. And although the wave has been magnified a lot, you still cannot see what is happening inside the container.” The process is nicknamed Schrödinger’s hat, a reference to Schrödinger’s cat from quantum mechanics.

The diagram [left] depicts a matter wave hitting a Schrödinger’s hat. Inside the container, the wave is magnified, but it isn’t apparent from the outside.

The group’s past work includes development of mathematics for cloaks that use metamaterials to bend waves and create an illusion of invisibility. They’ve also figured out a way to make waves disappear in one place and reappear somewhere else.

Uhlmann says the group hopes to find collaborators to develop a prototype of the latest findings, now that the research paper has been published.

Uhlmann, who is on leave at the University of California, Irvine, has been working on invisibility with fellow mathematicians Allan Greenleaf at the University of Rochester, Yaroslav Kurylev at University College London, and Matti Lassas at the University of Helsinki in Finland, all of whom are co-authors of the latest  paper.

Although Schrödinger’s Hat is still in the early stages of development, the media and marketing industries are [or should be] sitting up and focussing their rapt attention on the Hat's implications and opportunities of. In the opinion of this lowly scribe, the 'Hat' will be bigger than the 'Net' before the decade is out! 

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... "all of these devices will come to know us as individuals, will very much tailor themselves to us."

If, for example, a user leaves his car keys in the house, the device will in the first week remember where he left them and by the second week will remind the user to pick up his keys before leaving home.

Such devices, which continually record what the user is doing, will be available by 2014 or 2015, Rattner forcasts.

And according to his colleague, Moody Eden, president of Intel Israel: "Within five years all of the human senses will be in computers, and in ten years we will have more transistors in one chip than neurons in the human brain."

Intel is already implementing the new technology in digital signs it created for Adidas. These detect whether a shopper is male or female, adult or child and displays  shoes suitable to that person.

The new technology, part of Intel's expansion beyond its traditional semiconductor business, is being developed in in Israel by the Collaborative Research Institute for Computational Intelligence, a partnership involving specialists from the Technion in Haifa and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.  

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... an urban operating system developed by Living Plan IT will provide a platform to connect local services with the borough's citizens and businesses.

Partners in the scheme include Greenwich Council and such tech giants as Hitachi and Phillips. Their aim is to develop the Greenwich peninsula as a testbed for new technologies running on the Living Plan system, connecting key services such as water, transport, and energy.

According to David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science, a signatory to the partnership: "The development of smart cities in future is a crucial commercial opportunity for Britain, and London is the right place to be doing it. London was the largest city in the world by the end of the 18th Century [and] Britain has more historical experience than most of being urbanised."

Says Living Plan IT chief executive Steve Lewis: "We are entering a phase when everything becomes connected, from healthcare to transportation. This is about connecting things that previously never did."

Urban OS allegedly differs from traditional operating systems in that it is designed to be extremely robust. "If my email is down for ten minutes, it doesn't matter, but if the network is linked to my insulin pump, then that is different," Lewis observes.

In one newly built office block, Living Plan IT plans to implant thousands of sensors that will monitor external and internal conditions to create smart lighting and heating systems. It also plans to test smart lamp posts on the roads.

"They [the lamps] will be talking to each other, producing their own energy, raising lighting levels when cars are coming, and monitoring the movement of traffic," said Mr Lewis.

Other technologies to be tested with the OS include smart vests that have microsensors embedded in them to monitor heart rate and other vital signs.

The idea of smart cities has become the latest hot topic in the tech industry. By 2050 it is estimated that 70% of the world's population will live in cities.

Living Plan IT estimates that £13tn will be spent in developing and regenerating urban spaces between now and 2020. 

Read the original unabridged article. 

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... could appreciably increase Facebook's capital needs in the run-up to its expected Initial Public Offering. 

Opines Wieser: "Fear is a powerful motivator. In a world of fickle tastes and conditional loyalties, anyone depending upon taste and loyalty is correct to be fearful. In this context, it is unremarkable that Facebook announced this week that it is purchasing Instagram for consideration of approximately $1 billion (the percentage of cash and stock is as yet unknown).

Instagram is a social photo sharing app for mobile devices. Its business model was oriented towards generating revenue from advertising and tool licensing. The company is private, having raised $7.5 million to date – not including a round of funding that closed immediately in advance of the acquisition announcement – and likely generating de minimus revenue. Founded two years ago, the company reportedly had one million registered users by December 2010 which grew to approximately 30 million earlier this year.

We’ve previously highlighted that Facebook and Google are locked in a capital spending arms race, as each company seeks to offer up services with low latency, high speeds and fat storage.

Both companies are each spending hundreds of millions of dollars new data centers every year. In total, we estimate Facebook will spend around $2 billion each year on capital expenditures, compared with Google (whose architecture and business needs are much greater given its heavy reliance on video delivery and processing of data across the web) at a figure that should approach $6 billion each year by 2017.

While Google has a history of making frequent and sometimes sizeable acquisitions appropriate for its business mix, Facebook’s history had until now suggested smaller acquisitions were its only area of focus, as the company tended towards “acqui-hires” (whereby a small company would be bought primarily to bring that company’s founder into Facebook).

Facebook was right to buy Instagram given the very plausible threat that Facebook would have faced if Instagram were otherwise bought by Google to drive all of this fast growing traffic to its own social network, Google+.

But how many more Instagrams will there be? An extra billion dollars of acquisitions every year would equate to a reduction of approximately $10 billion of valuation for the Facebook under our assumptions.

It’s possible that the company will “only” need $1 billion on building out data centers and like functions every year, and so $1 billion in acquisitions could implicitly be incorporated into our model already. But it is becoming increasingly clear that fear of loss of dominant market share, the openly competitive markets on the web, and the trends enabling small companies to succeed will require incumbents to continue spending real money – usually unprofitably – every year.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... South Korea, India and Australia.

Says Ernst & Young partner Michel Driessen: "It is clear that Asian investors understand the financial backdrop in Europe at present and are keen to take advantage of this situation.

"Pricing, exchange rates and deal dynamics are all working to the benefit of Asian investors at present. It is the right time to acquire for growth in Europe."

The acquisitions covered a wide variety of businesses, mostly in the industrial product, computer services and software, financial services and chemical industries.

According to Ernst & Young, Asian companies should try to expand in Europe because that enables them to immediately gain loyal customers and quickly increase the size of their market shares.

Europe, in return, will give them a solid means of expanding further into other international markets.

The beancounter also posits that Asian companies hope to enter Germany, Britain and other European nations to expand R&D and innovation, thereby strengthening their products and improving their ability to conduct research and development in the Asia-Pacific region.

The combination of these influences has driven the Asia-Pacific region to increasingly turn to European acquisitions.

During the past five years, Australia has become the lead buyer in this area, accounting for 22% of the foreign merger and acquisition deals completed in Europe. It was followed by India with 19%, while China and Japan each took 8%.

Japan has spent more on mergers and acquisitions in Europe than any market in the Asia-Pacific region, having invested approximately US$79 billion since 2007.

Driessen said the ongoing financial and economic situation in Europe is giving Asia-Pacific companies opportunities to make interesting purchases at attractive prices.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... big data, mobile and cloud technologies will drive “bold investments and fateful decisions”.

The trend will virtually triple the volume of digital information from 2.7 zettabytes this year [equal to loading 2.7 billion Apple iMac desktop computers to capacity] to 8 zettabytes by 2015. 

Says Jon Woodruff, co-head of technology investment banking at Goldman Sachs: “The speed at which technology innovation moves is such that you can’t miss a step. Every tool has to be used for speed and nimbleness sake, and M&A is one of those significant tools.”

IT titans such as Hewlett-Packard, Google and Microsoft will be leading the gold rush, hoping to further capitalise on last year's 36% gain in technology deals - according to Bloomberg a dramatic leap compared with last year's worldwide gain of just four percent for all M&A activities.

Prophesies Larry Sonsini, co-founder of law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati which took Apple public in 1980: “You will see more M&A than last year with some very strategic technology companies involved as valuations have become more reasonable.” 

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... 500 members within one year, all privately-owned sector-leading Chinese companies. Members will be dedicated to exporting to the outside world and will flaunt the yet-to-be-unveiled IBB (International Best Buy) logo.

The alliance will seek global partners and investment destinations worldwide, with "business incubators" supported by overseas governments through free space for R&D, sales centers and facilities shared with local partners.

The group will also cooperate with international law firms and ask local governments to provide assistance with legal advice, consulting services, public relations and intellectual property protection.

Part of the effort includes encouraging and assisting member companies to register trademarks and apply for patents overseas.

Alliance executive Xue Li likens the initiative to "the Olympic Games [with] leading private Chinese companies as competitors.

"Before, foreign companies chose us as partners, but now we choose them. We can decide who we are going to cooperate with and where the 'games' take place," Ms Xuei said.

The alliance is also registering its IBB mark in potential overseas markets, although only fifty member companies will be entitled to use the logo along with their own trademarks.

"It's something like the Olympic Partner logo placed beside the trademark," said Xue. "Only products with top quality and brand value can use the mark."

She added that the list of IBB companies will be reshuffled every year according to a strict evaluation system made by representatives of members, founders of the alliance and industry experts.
 
Developed countries and emerging markets are equally attractive to the alliance, according to Xue's colleague Yang Bo.

The first overseas incubator will be in Europe. Members of the alliance will vote from a list of four candidate countries - the United Kingdom, Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands.

English language training is also offered to member entrepreneurs, and is seen as "a key step toward the world". The IBB alliance has organized a number of discussion groups to practice English along with sharing information and views.

Several internationally renowned business leaders are serving as consultants to the alliance, including Nobuyuki Idei, former Sony ceo; Christophe Weber, chief representative of the World Economic Forum in China, and Amir Gal-Or, managing partner of UK-based technology leader Infinity Group.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.